[NOISE] Re: SAIC bought InterNic, but who is SAIC? A spook contractor!

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

>SAIC's board members include Admiral Bobby Inman, former NSA head and deputy
>director of the CIA; Melvin Laird, Nixon's defense secretary; and retired
>General Max Thurman, commander of the Panama Invasion. Recently departed
>board members include Robert Gates, former CIA director; William Perry,
>current Secretary of Defense; and John Deutch, the current CIA director.
...
>"At the very time the Internet community is struggling with the issues of
>encryption and privacy, I'm more than a little uneasy to find this bunch of
>ex-spooks sitting at the very entry point of the Net," says Jim Warren (a

Yeah, that _is_ a pretty spooky bunch; I don't know if anybody'd have standing
to do a conflict-of-interest or governmental ethics case of any sort,
since it is more or less a monopoly?  
[BEGIN NOISE]
On the other hand, I suppose I'd
rather have the CIA making money by selling directory services than,
say, dealing cocaine or collecting graft from third-world governments :-)
[END NOISE]

>Current SAIC government contracts include re-engineering information systems
>at the Pentagon, automation of the FBI's computerized fingerprint
>identification system, and building a national criminal history information
>system.

SAIC's a fairly generalized contracting firm, specializing in study contracts
and other front-end work rather than back-end implementation grunt-work;
I'm not surprised by the list.
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# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281
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